And loud, amid the universal clamor, O'er distant deserts sounds the Tartar gong.

I hear the Florentine, who from his pal

ace

Wheels out his battle-bell with dreadful din,

And Aztec priests upon their teocallis Beat the wild war-drums made of serpent's skin;

The tumult of each sacked and burning village;

The shout that every prayer for mercy drowns ;

The soldiers' revels in the midst of pillage;

The wail of famine in beleaguered towns;

The bursting shell, the gateway wrenched asunder,

The rattling musketry, the clashing blade;

And ever and anon, in tones of thunder, The diapason of the cannonade.

Is it, O man, with such discordant noises,

With such accursed instruments as these,

Thou drownest Nature's sweet and kindly voices,

And jarrest the celestial harmonies ?

Were half the power, that fills the world with terror,

Were half the wealth, bestowed on camps and courts,

Given to redeem the human mind from error,

There were no need of arsenals or forts:

The warrior's name would be a name abhorred !

And every nation, that should lift again

Its hand against a brother, on its forehead

Would wear forevermore the curse of
Cain !

Down the dark future, through long generations,

The echoing sounds grow fainter and then cease;

IN the valley of the Pegnitz, where across broad meadow-lands

Rise the blue Franconian mountains, Nuremberg, the ancient, stands.

Quaint old town of toil and traffic, quaint

old town of art and song,

Memories haunt thy pointed gables, like

the rooks that round them throng:

Memories of the Middle Ages, when the emperors, rough and bold, Had their dwelling in thy castle, timedefying, centuries old;

And thy brave and thrifty burghers boasted, in their uncouth rhyme,

That their great imperial city stretched its hand through every clime.

In the court-yard of the castle, bound
with many an iron band,
Stands the mighty linden planted by
Queen Cunigunde's hand;

On the square the oriel window, where in old heroic days

Sat the poet Melchior singing Kaiser Maximilian's praise.

Everywhere I see around me rise the wondrous world of Art: Fountains wrought with richest sculpture standing in the common mart;

And above cathedral doorways saints and bishops carved in stone, By a former age commissioned as apostles

to our own.

In the church of sainted Sebald sleeps enshrined his holy dust,

And in bronze the Twelve Apostles guard from age to age their trust;

a pix of sculpture rare, Like the foamy sheaf of fountains, rising through the painted air.

Fairer seems the ancient city, and the sunshine seems more fair,

That he once has trod its pavement, that he once has breathed its air!

Through these streets sol road and stately, these obscure and dismal lanes, Walked of yore the Mastersingers, chant

ing rude poetic strains.

From remote and sunless suburbs came

they to the friendly guild, Building nests in Fame's great temple, as in spouts the swallows build.

As the weaver plied the shuttle, wove he too the mystic rhyme, And the smith his iron measures ham

mered to the anvil's chime;

Thanking God, whose boundless wisdom

makes the flowers of poesy bloom In the forge's dust and cinders, in the tissues of the loom.

Here Hans Sachs, the cobbler-poet, lau

reate of the gentle craft, Wisest of the Twelve Wise Masters, in huge folios sang and laughed.

But his house is now an ale-house, with a nicely sanded floor,

to drown his cark and care, Quaffing ale from pewter tankards, in the master's antique chair.

Vanished is the ancient splendor, and before my dreamy eye

Wave these mingled shapes and figures, like a faded tapestry.

Not thy Councils, not thy Kaisers, win for thee the world's regard;

But thy painter, Albrecht Dürer, and Hans Sachs thy cobbler-bard.

Thus, O Nuremberg, a wanderer from a region far away,

As he paced thy streets and court-yards, sang in thought his careless lay:

Gathering from the pavement's crevice, as a floweret of the soil, The nobility of labor, -the long pedigree of toil.

And, amid the tempest pealing,

face above the door;

Painted by some humble artist, as in

Adam Puschman's song,

As the old man gray and dove-like, with his great beard white and long.

Bells, that from the neighboring kloster Rang for the Nativity.

In the hall, the serf and vassal Held, that night, their Christmas wassail;

Many a carol, old and saintly,

Sang the minstrels and the waits;
And so loud these Saxon gleemen
Sang to slaves the songs of freemen,
That the storm was heard but faintly,
Knocking at the castle-gates.

Till at length the lays they chanted
Reached the chamber terror-haunted,
Where the monk, with accents holy,

Whispered at the baron's ear.

Tears upon his eyelids glistened,
As he paused awhile and listened,
And the dying baron slowly

Turned his weary head to hear.

"Wassail for the kingly stranger
Born and cradled in a manger!
King, like David, priest, like Aaron,
Christ is born to set us free!

And the lightning showed the sainted
Figures on the casement painted,
And exclaimed the shuddering baron,
"Miserere, Domine!"

In that hour of deep contrition
He beheld, with clearer vision,
Through all outward show and fashion,
Justice, the Avenger, rise.

All the pomp of earth had vanished,
Falsehood and deceit were banished,
Reason spake more loud than passion,
And the truth wore no disguise.

Every vassal of his banner,
Every serf born to his manor,
All those wronged and wretched crea-
tures,

By his hand were freed again.

And, as on the sacred missal
He recorded their dismissal,
Death relaxed his iron features,

And the monk replied, "Amen!"

Many centuries have been numbered
Since in death the baron slumbered
By the convent's sculptured portal,

Mingling with the common dust:

But the good deed, through the ages
Living in historic pages,
Brighter grows and gleams immortal,
Unconsumed by moth or rust.

RAIN IN SUMMER.

How beautiful is the rain!
After the dust and heat,
In the broad and fiery street,
In the narrow lane,

How beautiful is the rain!

How it clatters along the roofs, Like the tramp of hoofs !

How it gushes and struggles out From the throat of the overflowing spout!

Across the window-pane

It pours and pours;
And swift and wide,

With a muddy tide,

Like a river down the gutter roars

The rain, the welcome rain!

The sick man from his chamber looks At the twisted brooks;

He can feel the cool

Breath of each little pool;
His fevered brain
Grows calm again,

And he breathes a blessing on the rain.

From the neighboring school
Come the boys,

With more than their wonted noise
And commotion;

And down the wet streets
Sail their mimic fleets,
Till the treacherous pool
Ingulfs them in its whirling
And turbulent ocean.

In the country, on every side,
Where far and wide,

Like a leopard's tawny and spotted hide,.
Stretches the plain,

To the dry grass and the drier grain
How welcome is the rain!

In the furrowed land

The toilsome and patient oxen stand;
Lifting the yoke encumbered head,
With their dilated nostrils spread,
They silently inhale
The clover-scented gale,
And the vapors that arise

From the well-watered and smoking soil.
For this rest in the furrow after toil
Their large and lustrous eyes

That have not yet been wholly told, Have not been wholly sung nor said. For his thought, that never stops,

Follows the water-drops

Down to the graves of the dead,

TO A CHILD.

DEAR child! how radiant on thy mother's knee,

With merry-making eyes and jocund smiles,

Thou gazest at the painted tiles,
Whose figures grace,

With many a grotesque form and face,
The ancient chimney of thy nursery!
The lady with the gay macaw,
The dancing girl, the grave bashaw
With bearded lip and chin;
And, leaning idly o'er his gate,
Beneath the imperial fan of state,
The Chinese mandarin.

With what a look of proud command
Thou shakest in thy little hand
The coral rattle with its silver bells,
Making a merry tune!

Thousands of years in Indian seas
That coral grew, by slow degrees,
Until some deadly and wild monsoon
Dashed it on Coromandel's sand!
Those silver bells
Reposed of yore,
As shapeless ore,

Far down in the deep-sunken wells
Of darksome mines,

In some obscure and sunless place,
Beneath huge Chimborazo's base,
Or Potosí's o'erhanging pines!
And thus for thee, O little child,

found,

To the dreary fountain-head

Of lakes and rivers under ground;

And sees them, when the rain is done,
On the bridge of colors seven
Climbing up once more to heaven,
Opposite the setting sun.

Thus the Seer,

With vision clear,

Sees forms appear and disappear,
In the perpetual round of strange,
Mysterious change

From birth to death, from death to birth, From earth to heaven, from heaven to earth;

Till glimpses more sublime
Of things, unseen before,
Unto his wondering eyes reveal
The Universe, as an immeasurable wheel
Turning forevermore

In the rapid and rushing river of Time.

The tall ships passed the stormy cape; For thee in foreign lands remote, Beneath a burning, tropic clime,

The Indian peasant, chasing the wild goat,

Himself as swift and wild,

In falling, clutched the frail arbute,
The fibres of whose shallow root,
Uplifted from the soil, betrayed
The silver veins beneath it laid,
The buried treasures of the miser, Time.

But, lo! thy door is left ajar!
Thou hearest footsteps from afar !
And, at the sound,
Thou turnest round

With quick and questioning eyes,
Like one, who, in a foreign land,
Beholds on every hand
Some source of wonder and surprise!
And, restlessly, impatiently,
Thou strivest, strugglest, to be free.